Vote Results:
"All units, monitor hostile departure, but do not engage unless fired upon."
The raiders don't make us wait very long, boarding their dropships within several hours and burning for orbit.
Once the dropships leave, Alpha Company gets paid. Only about 10M C-Bills, but we get granted priority access to purchase a limited amount of advanced tech available to the Federated Commonwealth. Plus, the local base commander insists on unloading some prototype equipment derived from captured Kurita salvage - pretty standard deal, the equipment prototypes will gather telemetry, and we're expected to report on their performance as well as hand over the telemetry data. And we pay for the equipment, too.
To abstract the decision-making process, we have 23 (or 27, depending on our choices) "points" of equipment that we can buy, rated as follows in the format "Equipment (point value)":
[] Double heat sinks (1)
[] XL Engine of choice (10)
[] Listen-Kill warheads (1/ton)
[] LB-10X autocannon (5), ammo (1/ton)
[] Ultra/5 autocannon (5), ammo (1/ton)
The experimental equipment is all salvaged Kurita lasers, and we'll need to pick one:
[] 1 ER Large laser
[] 1 Large Pulse laser
[] 1 ER PPC
[] 2 Medium Pulse laser
[] 4 Small Pulse laser
[] Forget the energy weapons, get another 4 points of FedCom equipment
A few words on the equipment:
The pulse lasers generates a ton of heat but is extremely accurate, making it great for rookies (as long as they don't overheat their mechs). Their range is a little on the low side though, reduced by as much as 33% for the medium and large versions.
The ER Large has slightly better range than a standard PPC while generating more heat and doing less damage. Xwraith is happy with his, but that's because of a recovered Star League-era improved cooling jacket that brings its heat down.
The ER PPC generates an unbelievable amount of heat, but has the advantage of charging up a lot faster, so being at short range is not a disadvantage. And also, it's "extended range", with about a 25% range improvement, so it can shoot almost as far as an AC/2. We wouldn't be able to fully equip an Awesome or anything.
The energy weapon prototypes generate a substantial amount of heat, so if we plan on using them, we'll need to invest heavily in double heat sinks.
XL Engines drastically reduce mech engine weight, allowing us to use the saved tonnage on more armor, equipment, etc, but are pretty bulky. Normally, taking substantial damage to a side torso section doesn't disable a mech, but it does with an XL. Still, they're pretty good.
LB-10X is lighter than the standard AC/10 by a ton, has a longer range and can fire standard or cluster rounds, which have wider scatter but are more likely to hit the target.
The ultra AC/5 is heavier than the AC/5 and has a longer range, but is capable of rapid fire. Well, technically, you can rapid-fire the AC/5 as well, but that tends to cause catastrophic jams. An ultra can jam, but it won't explode on you.
Listen-Kill warheads are nice, but run out pretty quick (well, the good ones anyway, we still have tons of listen-kill SRM/2s and LRM/5s kicking around) and any modern ECM defeats the advanced homing systems with ease.
Once we finish up the cadre duty contract, we get paid for that as well - at that point, it's the end of June. Our Long Tom crews have really pulled it together (except for a few guys who couldn't hack it and decided to leave our employment). Alpha will have earned ~25M C-Bills after all is said and done. Not quite the paydays we were seeing back in '39 or the Ronin Wars (or the 4th), but money don't stink. Well, for the most part.
Stefan announces his retirement, having struck up a relationship with a local resident and taken a job offer training rookies for FedCom. With 83 battles and 114 kills under his belt (18 of them mechs) over the course of 15 years, the 39-year-old mechwarrior excelled in the operation of jump-capable mechs, and got pretty good with the kicking, too. Having driven everything from a Vulcan to a Grasshopper (and even having taken a ride in Xwraith's Thunderbolt once), his heaviest mech kill was a Warhammer. He even managed to overcome the odd case of pyromania. Mostly.
Who's going to be Stefan Mk II and drive the Catapult?
[] PFC Leon Eng - 27 years old, male, 3 gunnery/4 piloting, expert in rough weather conditions
[] PFC Ok-Hwa Park - 37 years old, female, 3 gunnery/4 piloting, expert in ground maneuvering
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May 28, 3042
Connaught, Free Worlds League
100km north of dropship atmospheric entry point
Beta's arrival on Connaught does not go unnoticed, and a Fury-class dropship with conventional fighter escorts and a couple of aerospace fighters moves to intercept. Not wanting to become embroiled in a risky dropship-on-dropship battle, we send out Beta-Strike and Delta-Interceptor to discourage them as our dropships fire up their retro engines and begin their descent. A Fury is not the nastiest dropship in existence (our Unions have more guns), but it's optimized for atmospheric operations, while our Unions are basically big balls and have the maneuverability of a stuck pig.
Hawk, our long-time buddy and Lyran liaison, has a Seydlitz deploy from his Leopard-class dropship as well to help us out. Beta-Strike is two heavies and a medium - a Stuka (customized with an Artemis IV fire control system for the nose-mounted LRM launcher), a Lucifer and a Lightning. Delta-Interceptor is three light fighters, so their job will be to keep the gnats off our heavies while they make attack runs on the dropship.
We make our interception over a major city, so the locals are going to get a fireworks show, and possibly some aircraft crashing down into the streets. Sorry.
Round 1:
"Contacts, dead ahead. Eight fighters, one dropship." calls out the lieutenant in charge of Beta-Strike. "Engage the fighters first, we have some room".
Round 2:
The seat cushions in our fighters get a good workout as they fire up their engines to maximum "safe" acceleration. It's possible to go faster, but usually you save that for when you really need it, because the aircraft starts vibrating - in space, if you mess up a maneuver or push your engines too hard, no big whoop, your craft just drifts until you fix the tumble and restart the engines. If you mess up a maneuver in atmo, that can cost you.
Round 3:
Time to start the furball, as a pair of lighter aircraft dart in. Our Stuka pilot looks forward to trying out his Artemis IV, except that the diagnostic screen displays a very encouraging message - "incompatible ordnance detected, reverting to standard fire control." He grunts in frustration and opens fire with what he's got anyway. The little fighter hits the Stuka with a couple of lasers, then disintegrates in mid-air as our Lightning brings its AC/20 to bear. Another fighter, a Thrush gets a few more good hits in on our Stuka as well, and nobody's able to catch him.
Round 4:
We're just about at maximum weapons range to fire on the dropship, but we still want to clear a few of the fruit flies away first. These Meteors are pretty nasty, packing an AC/10 for enough firepower to bring an aircraft down. But this Meteor proves to be no threat, as our Stuka fires its large lasers, puncturing armor and detonating the on-board SRM ammo, which causes the Marik fighter to disintegrate. The Stuka takes an AC/10 round and a few LRMs from a Defender, and rattles around a bit, but the aero jock barely even notices.
Our buddy Seydlitz moves to intercept said Defender, nailing it in the tail with the lone large laser, but takes an AC/10 burst from another Meteor. The Lyran aero jock manages to hold it together. The Marik guy in the Defender does not, and spirals downwards at a pretty good clip, exploding as it hits the ground, and collapsing a building. Whoops.
Round 5:
"Right. Break and attack. Stay clear of that nose." Beta-Strike's lieutenant reminds our heavies as we begin firing on the Fury. Lasers, missiles and autocannon rounds score and pit the dropship's armor, as the enemy fighters open up on our heavies, trying to keep them off. The Stuka takes an autocannon burst and SRMs to the left wing, stripping armor there, but it holds.
Our smaller fighters each pick a target and open fire. Delta-Interceptor's Cheetah takes a good chunk out of the Meteor targeting the Stuka, blowing off an SRM launcher with a laser. Our Centurion gets a good shot on the other Meteor, with several lasers hitting the cockpit. The Marik pilot probably blacked out, because his aircraft does a couple of spirals then slams into the ground, detonating once it hits.
Round 6:
One of our light fighters strays into the firing arc of the Fury's weapons bays and pays for it, taking multiple hits and blowing out sensitive equipment. Our heavies continue laying into the dropship, with the Stuka taking several laser and autocannon shots from the swarming enemy fighters. A Meteor takes some laser hits from one of our Cheetahs as our light aircarft gets on the conventional fighter's tail and blazes away, blowing chunks off the engine and an SRM launcher. This time, everyone retains control of their aircraft, though.
Round 7:
Our Cheetah takes another blast from the Fury, losing a medium laser, but managing to bring down a Stingray as it loops around for a pass on our heavies. The dropship tries to turn, but our heavies easily keep up with it, staying away from its weapon bays.
Round 8:
The Fury pulls up, momentarily losing our Stuka, but not the rest of our heavies, then takes a couple of shots to thre thrusters and starts losing altitude quite reapidly.
Round 9:
The only enemy fighter left in the air is a Thrush, with two remaining Meteors pulling away as fast as they can. This leaves the Fury totally uncovered (not to mention completely unable to evade), and it breaks up into two pieces as our Lightning puts in the finishing burst with the AC/20.
The Thrush gets a good working over from our light fighters, losing control of the aircraft as lasers poke through armor and at the internal structure. The pilot manages to level it out before hitting the ground, then accelerates rapidly away - we let him go, as our objective here is complete.
A pretty good start to the raid overall, taking out a dropship. Granted, "only" a Fury, which doesn't really have much carrying capacity - four infantry platoons and eight light or medium tanks, but still, better to not have extra tanks dropping in while we're trying to work.
Not much to salvage here, and it seems inadvisable to take our salvage crews into the city anyway when the planetary population isn't exactly friendly to us. Our dropships land and we begin deploying patrols to secure the immediate area, as well as attempt to locate our target.